Shoppers will soon be able to make purchases directly through Google’s Gemini app and browser.



Google and Walmart Join Forces to Shape the Future of Retail — from adweek.com by Lauren Johnson
At NRF, Sundar Pichai and John Furner revealed how AI and drones will shape shopping in 2026 and beyond

One of the biggest reveals is that shoppers will be able to purchase Walmart and Sam’s Club products through Google’s AI chatbot Gemini.


 

At CES 2026, Everything Is AI. What Matters Is How You Use It — from wired.com by Boone Ashworth
Integrated chatbots and built-in machine intelligence are no longer standout features in consumer tech. If companies want to win in the AI era, they’ve got to hone the user experience.

Beyond Wearables
Right now, AI is on your face and arms—smart glasses and smart watches—but this year will see it proliferate further into products like earbuds, headphones, and smart clothing.

Health tech will see an influx of AI features too, as companies aim to use AI to monitor biometric data from wearables like rings and wristbands. Heath sensors will also continue to show up in newer places like toilets, bath mats, and brassieres.

The smart home will continue to be bolstered by machine intelligence, with more products that can listen, see, and understand what’s happening in your living space. Familiar candidates for AI-powered upgrades like smart vacuums and security cameras will be joined by surprising AI bedfellows like refrigerators and garage door openers.


Along these lines, see
live updates from CNET here.


ChatGPT is overrated. Here’s what to use instead. — from washingtonpost.com by Geoffrey A. Fowler
When I want help from AI, ChatGPT is no longer my default first stop.

I can tell you which AI tools are worth using — and which to avoid — because I’ve been running a chatbot fight club.

I conducted dozens of bot challenges based on real things people do with AI, including writing breakup texts and work emailsdecoding legal contracts and scientific researchanswering tricky research questions, and editing photos and making “art.” Human experts including best-selling authors, reference librarians, a renowned scientist and even a Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer judged the results.

After a year of bot battles, one thing stands out: There is no single best AI. The smartest way to use chatbots today is to pick different tools for different jobs — and not assume one bot can do it all.


How Collaborative AI Agents Are Shaping the Future of Autonomous IT — from aijourn.com by Michael Nappi

Some enterprise platforms now support cross-agent communication and integration with ecosystems maintained by companies like Microsoft, NVIDIA, Google, and Oracle. These cross-platform data fabrics break down silos and turn isolated AI pilots into enterprise-wide services. The result is an IT backbone that not only automates but also collaborates for continuous learning, diagnostics, and system optimization in real time.


Nvidia dominated the headlines in 2025 — these were its 15 biggest events of the year — from finance.yahoo.com by Daniel Howley

It’s difficult to think of any single company that had a bigger impact on Wall Street and the AI trade in 2025 than Nvidia (NVDA).

Nvidia’s revenue soared in 2025, bringing in $187.1 billion, and its market capitalization continued to climb, briefly eclipsing the $5 trillion mark before settling back in the $4 trillion range.

There were plenty of major highs and deep lows throughout the year, but these 15 were among the biggest moments of Nvidia’s 2025.


 

 

Work from Home Jobs No Experience — from intelligenthq.com by A.Peyman Khosravani

Work from home jobs with no experience can help you earn money from home, even if you are new and have never done a remote job before. If you are looking for work from home jobs with no experience and aren’t sure which are real (and worth your time), you’re in the right place. In this guide, you will find real, beginner-friendly remote jobs you can do from home, even if you have never worked remotely before.

We will explain the best entry-level options, what they may pay, what you need to get started, and how to avoid scams. I will also share simple tips to help you get work-from-home jobs with no experience and start remote jobs faster.

1) What is the best work from home with no experience?
The best work-from-home jobs with no experience are usually remote customer service, transcription, AI task work, or moderation, since training and guidelines are provided.

2) What jobs can you do online from home with no experience?
You can do online customer support, transcription/captioning, microtasks, paid research studies, and entry-level AI evaluation tasks.

 

Rebuilding The First Rung Of The Opportunity Ladder — from forbes.com by Bruno V. Manno

Two-thirds of employers say most new hires are not fully prepared for their roles, citing “experience,” not technical skill, as the greatest shortfall. At the same time, 61% of companies have raised their experience requirements.

As a result, many so-called entry-level roles now demand two to five years of prior work experience. The first rung of the career ladder has been pulled even farther out of reach for new job seekers. A portfolio—or full-spectrum—model of work-based learning is one promising way to rebuild that rung.

Experience has become what Deloitte calls “the new currency of employability.” But the places where young people once earned that currency are disappearing.

 

25 Big Ideas that will define 2026 — from linkedin.com by LinkedIn News
This year’s predictions capture a world in flux, where technology and humanity will press closer than ever, fueling new opportunities and tensions.

Blockchain: Blockchain technology will create new ways for creators to keep more of their revenue by enabling them to host their own content, bypassing traditional social media platforms that take a cut of their earnings.

3.AI: Artificial intelligence will enhance creators’ ability to scale their personal brands exponentially — producing more content, creating virtual influencers and expanding reach in ways we’ve never seen.

Laws around artificial intelligence in mental health care are set to change dramatically in 2026, in the wake of lawsuits alleging harm or “psychosis” linked to AI tools. After years of rapid adoption — and little oversight — regulators will move to treat therapy chatbots more like medical devices than lifestyle apps.

Small businesses — which make up 90% of companies globally — will be the top destination for young jobseekers in 2026.

Generative engine optimization (GEO) is set to replace search engine optimization (SEO) as the way brands get discovered in the year ahead. As consumers turn to AI chatbots, agentic workflows and answer engines, appearing prominently in generative outputs will matter more than ranking in search engines.

 
 

7 Legal Tech Trends That Will Reshape Every Business In 2026 — from forbes.com by Bernard Marr

Here are the trends that will matter most.

  1. AI Agents As Legal Assistants
  2. AI As A Driver Of Business Strategy
  3. Automation In Judicial Administration
  4. Always-On Compliance Monitoring
  5. Cybersecurity As An Essential Survival Tool
  6. Predictive Litigation
  7. Compliance As Part Of The Everyday Automation Fabric

According to the Thomson Reuters Future Of Professionals report, most experts already expect AI to transform their work within five years, with many viewing it as a positive force. The challenge now is clear: legal and compliance leaders must understand the tools reshaping their field and prepare their teams for a very different way of working in 2026.


Addendum on 12/17/25:

 

Celebrating International Day of Persons with Disabilities — from joshbersin.com by Josh Bersin

Today I want to celebrate the International Day of Persons with Disabilities, an important day that recognizes the needs of millions of people. My perspective, as a professional entering my later years, is that many of us are likely to have disabilities over time, so the more we understand the diversity of disabilities the better for everyone.

First, let me point out that this is a massive population. The US Department of Labor and Census estimates that 11-13% of the working age population has some form of disability (more on what that means below), yet only 5-6% of workers. This points out that the employment ratio (percent of people with jobs) is far lower. People with disabilities are one-third as likely to have a job, which is quite a disparity and loss of economic potential.

Second, people with disabilities suffer a 15% lower average wage.


Josh linked to the item below:


Celebrating International Day of persons with disabilities
International Day of Persons with Disabilities (IDPD) is a UN day that is celebrated every year on 3 December.

The day is about promoting the rights and well-being of persons with disabilities at every level of society and development, and to raise awareness of the situation of persons with disabilities in all aspects of political, social, economic, and cultural life. WHO joins the UN in observing this day each year, reinforcing the importance of securing the rights of people with disabilities, so they can participate fully, equally and effectively in society with others, and face no barriers in all aspects of their lives.

At its headquarters in Geneva, WHO organizes an annual IDPD event to educate the public, raise awareness, advocate for political will and resources, and celebrate WHO’s achievements. In 2022, the WHO launched the Global Report on health equity for persons with disabilities. This report sets forth the approaches and actions that countries can take to address the health inequities that persons with disabilities experience.


From DSC:
I just want to add that one of our daughters has some special needs. So Josh’s posting caught my eye. He’s right to point out these things. You and I will likely have a period of disability in our lives. It’s not just relevant for “other people.” (And by the way…in the learning world, practicing Universal Design for Learning (UDL) is good for everyone!)

People with disabilities face enormous challenges that neurotypical people never have to deal with. They face unfair wage situations and a lack of opportunities. Our family has experienced — and continues to experience — this firsthand.

So thanks Josh for your posting here.


 

 

Agents, robots, and us: Skill partnerships in the age of AI — from mckinsey.com by Lareina Yee, Anu Madgavkar, Sven Smit, Alexis Krivkovich, Michael Chui, María Jesús Ramírez, and Diego Castresana
AI is expanding the productivity frontier. Realizing its benefits requires new skills and rethinking how people work together with intelligent machines.

At a glance

  • Work in the future will be a partnership between people, agents, and robots—all powered by AI. …
  • Most human skills will endure, though they will be applied differently. …
  • Our new Skill Change Index shows which skills will be most and least exposed to automation in the next five years….
  • Demand for AI fluency—the ability to use and manage AI tools—has grown sevenfold in two years…
  • By 2030, about $2.9 trillion of economic value could be unlocked in the United States…

Also related/see:



State of AI: December 2025 newsletter — from nathanbenaich.substack.com by Nathan Benaich
What you’ve got to know in AI from the last 4 weeks.

Welcome to the latest issue of the State of AI, an editorialized newsletter that covers the key developments in AI policy, research, industry, and start-ups over the last month.


 

Law Firm 2.0: A Trillion-Dollar Market Begins To Move — from abovethelaw.com by Ken Crutchfield
The test cases for Law Firm 2.0 are arriving faster than many expected.

A move to separate legal advice from other legal services that don’t require advice is a big shift that would ripple through established firms and also test regulatory boundaries.

The LegalTech Fund (TLTF) sees a $1 trillion opportunity to reinvent legal services through the convergence of technology, regulatory changes, and innovation. TLTF calls this movement Law Firm 2.0, and the fund believes a reinvention will pave the way for entirely new, tech-enabled models of legal service delivery.


From Paper to Platform: How LegalTech Is Revolutionizing the Practice of Law — from markets.financialcontent.com by AB Newswire

For decades, practicing law has been a business about paper — contracts, case files, court documents, and floor-to-ceiling piles of precedent. But as technology transforms all aspects of modern-day business, law firms and in-house legal teams are transforming along with it. The development of LegalTech has revolutionized what was previously a paper-driven, manpower-intensive profession into a data-driven digital web of collaboration and automation.

Conclusion: Building the Future of Law
The practice of law has always been about accuracy, precedent, and human beings. Technology doesn’t alter that — it magnifies it. The shift to the platform from paper is about liberating lawyers from back-office tasks so they can concentrate on strategy, advocacy, and creativity.

By coupling intelligent automation with moral obligation, today’s firms are positioning the legal profession for a more intelligent, responsive industry. LegalTech isn’t about automation, it’s about empowering attorneys to practice at the speed of today’s business.


What Legal Can Learn from Other Industries’ AI Transformations — from jdsupra.com

Artificial intelligence has already redefined how industries like finance, healthcare, and supply chain operate — transforming once-manual processes into predictive, data-driven engines of efficiency.

Yet the legal industry, while increasingly open to innovation, still lags behind its peers in adopting automation at scale. As corporate legal departments face mounting pressure to do more with less, they have an opportunity to learn from how other sectors successfully integrated AI into their operations.

The message is clear: AI transformation doesn’t just change workflows — it changes what’s possible.


7 Legal Tech Trends To Watch In 2026 — from lexology.com


Small Language Models Are Changing Legal Tech: What That Means for Lawyers and Law Firms — from community.nasscom.in

The legal profession is at a turning point. Artificial intelligence tools are moving from novelty to everyday utility, and small language models, or SLMs, are a major reason why. For law firms and in-house legal teams that are balancing client confidentiality, tight budgets, and the need to move faster, SLMs offer a practical, high impact way to bring legal AI into routine practice. This article explains what SLMs are, why they matter to lawyers, where they fit in legal workflows, and how to adopt them responsibly.


Legal AI startup draws new $50 million Blackstone investment, opens law firm — from reuters.com by Sara Merken

NEW YORK, Nov 20 (Reuters) – Asset manager Blackstone (BX.N), opens new tab has invested $50 million in Norm Ai, a legal and compliance technology startup that also said on Thursday that it is launching an independent law firm that will offer “AI-native legal services.”

Lawyers at the new New York-based firm, Norm Law LLP, will use Norm Ai’s artificial intelligence technology to do legal work for Blackstone and other financial services clients, said Norm Ai founder and CEO John Nay.


Law School Toolbox Podcast Episode 531: What Law Students Should Know About New Legal Tech (w/Gabe Teninbaum) — from jdsupra.com

Today, Alison and Gabe Teninbaum — law professor and creator of SpacedRepetition.com — discuss how technology is rapidly transforming the legal profession, emphasizing the importance for law students and lawyers to develop technological competence and adapt to new tools and roles in the legal profession.  


New York is the San Francisco of legal tech — from businessinsider.com by Melia Russell

  • Legal tech ?? NYC.
  • To win the market, startups say they need to be where the law firms and corporate legal chiefs are.
  • Legora and Harvey are expanding their footprints in New York, as Clio hunts for office space.

Legal Tech Startups Expand in New York to Access Law Firms — from indexbox.io

Several legal technology startups are expanding their physical presence in New York City, according to a report from Legal tech NYC. The companies state that to win market share, they need to be located where major law firms and corporate legal departments are based.


Linklaters unveils 20-strong ‘AI lawyer’ team — from legalcheek.com by Legal Cheek

Magic Circle giant Linklaters has launched a team of 20 ‘AI Lawyers’ (yes, that is their actual job title) as it ramps up its commitment to artificial intelligence across its global offices.

The new cohort is a mix of external tech specialists and Linklaters lawyers who have decided to boost their legal expertise with advanced AI know-how. They will be placed into practice groups around the world to help build prompts, workflows and other tech driven processes that the firm hopes will sharpen client delivery.


I went to a closed-door retreat for top lawyers. The message was clear: Don’t fear AI — use it. — from businessinsider.com by Melia Russell

  • AI is making its mark on law firms and corporate legal teams.
  • Clients expect measurable savings, and firms are spending real money to deliver them.
  • At TLTF Summit, Big Law leaders and legal-tech builders explored the future of the industry.

From Cost Center to Command Center: The Future of Litigation is Being Built In-House — from law.stanford.edu by Adam Rouse,  Tamra Moore, Renee Meisel, Kassi Burns, & Olga Mack

Litigation isn’t going away, but who leads, drafts, and drives it is rapidly changing. Empirical research shows corporate legal departments have steadily expanded litigation management functions over the past decade. (Annual Litigation Trends Survey, Norton Rose Fulbright (2025)).

For decades, litigation lived squarely in the law firm domain. (Wald, Eli, Getting in and Out of the House: Career Trajectories of In-House Lawyers, Fordham Law Review, Vol. 88, No. 1765, 2020 (June 22, 2020)). Corporate legal departments played a responsive role: approving strategies, reviewing documents, and paying hourly rates. But through dozens of recent conversations with in-house legal leaders, legal operations professionals, and litigation specialists, a new reality is emerging. One in which in-house counsel increasingly owns the first draft, systematizes their litigation approach, and reshapes how outside counsel fits into the picture.

AI, analytics, exemplar libraries, playbooks, and modular document builders are not simply tools. They are catalysts for a structural shift. Litigation is becoming modular, data-informed, and orchestrated by in-house teams who increasingly want more than cost control. They want consistency, clarity, and leverage. This piece outlines five major trends from our qualitative research, predictions on their impact to the practice of law, and research questions that are worth considering to further understand these trends. A model is then introduced for understanding how litigation workflows and outside counsel relationships will evolve in the coming years.

 

AI’s Role in Online Learning > Take It or Leave It with Michelle Beavers, Leo Lo, and Sara McClellan — from intentionalteaching.buzzsprout.com by Derek Bruff

You’ll hear me briefly describe five recent op-eds on teaching and learning in higher ed. For each op-ed, I’ll ask each of our panelists if they “take it,” that is, generally agree with the main thesis of the essay, or “leave it.” This is an artificial binary that I’ve found to generate rich discussion of the issues at hand.




 

Could Your Next Side Hustle Be Training AI? — from builtin.com by Jeff Rumage
As automation continues to reshape the labor market, some white-collar professionals are cashing in by teaching AI models to do their jobs.

Summary: Artificial intelligence may be replacing jobs, but it’s also creating some new ones. Professionals in fields like medicine, law and engineering can earn big money training AI models, teaching them human skills and expertise that may one day make those same jobs obsolete.


DEEP DIVE: The AI user interface of the future = Voice — from theneurondaily.com by Grant Harvey
PLUS: Gemini 3.0 and Microsoft’s new voice features

Here’s the thing: voice is finally good enough to replace typing now. And I mean actually good enough, not “Siri, play Despacito” good enough.

To Paraphrase Andrej Karpathy’s famous quote, “the hottest new programming language is English”, in this case, the hottest new user interface is talking.

The Great Convergence: Why Voice Is Having Its Moment
Three massive shifts just collided to make voice interfaces inevitable.

    1. First, speech recognition stopped being terrible. …
    2. Second, our devices got ears everywhere. …
    3. Third, and most importantly: LLMs made voice assistants smart enough to be worth talking to. …

Introducing group chats in ChatGPT — from openai.com
Collaborate with others, and ChatGPT, in the same conversation.

Update on November 20, 2025: Early feedback from the pilot has been positive, so we’re expanding group chats to all logged-in users on ChatGPT Free, Go, Plus and Pro plans globally over the coming days. We will continue refining the experience as more people start using it.

Today, we’re beginning to pilot a new experience in a few regions that makes it easy for people to collaborate with each other—and with ChatGPT—in the same conversation. With group chats, you can bring friends, family, or coworkers into a shared space to plan, make decisions, or work through ideas together.

Whether you’re organizing a group dinner or drafting an outline with coworkers, ChatGPT can help. Group chats are separate from your private conversations, and your personal ChatGPT memory is never shared with anyone in the chat.




 

Clio Completes Historic $1 Billion vLex Acquisition, Announces $500 Million Series G at $5 Billion Valuation, Plus Exclusive Interview with CEO and CFO — from lawnext.com

Legal technology company Clio has completed its $1 billion acquisition of vLex, marking the conclusion of the largest deal in legal tech history, and has simultaneously closed a $500 million Series G funding round, along with a $350 million debt facility, valuing the combined company at $5 billion, and clearing the way to move forward on creating an unprecedented unified platform that spans both the business and practice of law.

With the deal now closed, Clio becomes a company with $400 million in annual recurring revenue and a customer base of 400,000 legal professionals, it says.

“This is a defining moment for Clio and for the legal industry,” said Jack Newton, Clio’s founder and CEO. “We founded Clio to transform the legal experience for all, and this milestone brings that mission to a new horizon.”

The transaction brings vLex’s 350-plus employees – including experts in law, data and technology – into Clio’s organization, creating what Newton calls “the world’s most powerful legal intelligence platform, a platform that will define how legal work is done for generations to come.”

By combining practice management, research, drafting, and firm operations into connected AI-powered workflows, the platform aims to enable legal professionals to move from insight to action with greater speed and precision.

 

How Coworking Spaces Are Becoming The Learning Ecosystems Of The Future — from hrfuture.net

What if your workspace helped you level up your career? Coworking spaces are becoming learning hubs where skills grow, ideas connect, and real-world education fits seamlessly into the workday.

Continuous learning has become a cornerstone of professional longevity, and flexible workspaces already encourage it through workshops, talks, and mentoring. Their true potential, however, may lie in becoming centers of industry-focused education that help professionals stay adaptable in a rapidly changing world of work.
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What if forward-thinking workspaces and coworking centers became hubs of lifelong learning, integrating job-relevant training with accessible, real-world education?

For coworking operators, this raises important questions: Which types of learning thrive best in these environments, and how much do the design and layout of a space influence how people learn?

By exploring these questions and combining innovative programs with cutting-edge technology aligned to the future workforce, could coworking spaces ultimately become the classrooms of tomorrow?

 

A New AI Career Ladder — from ssir.org (Stanford Social Innovation Review) by Bruno V. Manno; via Matt Tower
The changing nature of jobs means workers need new education and training infrastructure to match.

AI has cannibalized the routine, low-risk work tasks that used to teach newcomers how to operate in complex organizations. Without those task rungs, the climb up the opportunity ladder into better employment options becomes steeper—and for many, impossible. This is not a temporary glitch. AI is reorganizing work, reshaping what knowledge and skills matter, and redefining how people are expected to acquire them.

The consequences ripple from individual career starts to the broader American promise of economic and social mobility, which includes both financial wealth and social wealth that comes from the networks and relationships we build. Yet the same technology that complicates the first job can help us reinvent how experience is earned, validated, and scaled. If we use AI to widen—not narrow—access to education, training, and proof of knowledge and skill, we can build a stronger career ladder to the middle class and beyond. A key part of doing this is a redesign of education, training, and hiring infrastructure.

What’s needed is a redesigned model that treats work as a primary venue for learning, validates capability with evidence, and helps people keep climbing after their first job. Here are ten design principles for a reinvented education and training infrastructure for the AI era.

  1. Create hybrid institutions that erase boundaries. …
  2. Make work-based learning the default, not the exception. …
  3. Create skill adjacencies to speed transitions. …
  4. Place performance-based hiring at the core. 
  5. Ongoing supports and post-placement mobility. 
  6. Portable, machine-readable credentials with proof attached. 
  7. …plus several more…
 
© 2025 | Daniel Christian